Thief River Falls (18 page)

He was alone on the road and still a long hike from Pennington Avenue. The houses on either side were dark. No one was awake.

Curtis retrieved his phone from his pocket and dialed.

“It’s me,” he said. “Change of plans.”

“What do you mean, change of plans? I just talked to you. What the hell is going on?”

County Attorney Denis Farrell had the raspy, impatient voice of someone who hadn’t slept all night and wasn’t in the mood for
unpleasant surprises. Curtis had known Farrell for years. He didn’t like him much, but Farrell also wasn’t the kind of man he wanted to cross.

“Lisa’s gone,” Curtis told him.

“Gone? You were supposed to watch her! You were supposed to keep her under control!”

“I know, but she heard me talking to you. She heard what we were planning at the airport. She hit me and took off. You need to get someone out here to pick me up. My head hurts like hell.”

“All right, all right, quit whining. I’ll have someone out there in a few minutes. How did Lisa get away? On foot?”

“No. The woman gave her a car. It’s a blue Camaro with black racing stripes. I don’t remember the license plate, but the thing shouldn’t be too hard to spot.”

“Where do you think she’ll go?”

“She wanted to leave town to protect the boy, so I assume that’s still what she’ll try to do. She’ll probably head to the Cities.”

“All right, I’ll talk to the sheriff and get patrols out to watch the roads,” Farrell replied. “We’ll find her before she’s out of the county.”

“You better hang on, Denis. This thing is a lot more complicated now. Your men need to take it easy.”

“Why?”

“I’m pretty sure Lisa is armed. I told you, this Shyla woman is a walking billboard for the NRA. I think she loaded Lisa up with weapons before she left. Your people need to be prepared.”

“What kind of weapons are we talking about?” Farrell asked.

“Shyla had everything. Pistols. Shotguns. Assault rifles. Heavy-duty stuff.”

Farrell was silent for a long time. “I cannot believe this.”

“Well, believe it,” Curtis told him. “You can’t just pull her off the road and expect this to go well. I listened to how Lisa talks about that
boy. As far as she’s concerned, she’ll die to keep him safe and away from us. She isn’t giving up without a fight.”

Denis Farrell put down the phone. He missed corded phones, which you could slam into their cradle.

He pushed back the chair from behind his desk and labored to stand up. His walking stick leaned against the bookshelves, and he grabbed it for support. Over his head, beams groaned in the old house as his wife, Gillian, paced back and forth in their bedroom. Neither one of them had slept. Gillian probably had a drink in her hand, the way she’d had for the last twenty-four hours.

For a man whose whole life was about control, the current situation for Denis was intolerable. He needed someone to blame, someone to be the target of his wrath and rage. Now he had it. Everything that had gone wrong in the past day was the fault of Lisa Power.

“That was your husband,” Farrell told Laurel March. “He screwed up.”

Laurel sat in a wooden chair on the other side of the desk, with the yellow glow of a brass lamp lighting her up. Otherwise, the office was gloomy, filled with long shadows. Her face bloomed with concern, and she leaned forward in the chair.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked.

“Lisa hit him and ran.”

“She
hit
him?” Laurel asked sharply. “Is Curtis okay?”

Denis dismissed her concerns with a wave of his walking stick. “Oh, please. He’s a farmer. Farmers are indestructible. The man could stick his face in a thresher and not even need a bandage. He’ll be fine.”

“I need to go to him.”

“Don’t bother. We’re busy here, and you and I have work to do. I’ll text Garrett to pick up Curtis and bring him back here.” Denis ran a hand along the many hardcovers on his bookshelves, which rose all the
way to the ceiling. He’d collected them for most of his life, and there wasn’t a speck of dust on any of them. His interests were wide ranging. Novels. Histories. Biographies. Political theory. Among the shelves were Lisa Power’s four books, including the one that had made her a legend in town.
Thief River Falls.

The book in which she’d humiliated him.

“According to Curtis, Lisa is armed now,” Denis went on. “Apparently this taxi driver passed along some of her guns to her.”

Laurel closed her eyes. “Oh, no.”

“Dr. March, do you have any idea how dangerous this situation has become? Do you understand the risks if this goes bad?”

“I do,” Laurel said. “Of course I do.”

“This is a disaster. Why do you think I told you to come down here? You said you could
prevent
this from happening. You told me the best thing to do was
play along
and pretend to be on her side. You told me you could get the boy back and make this whole thing with Lisa go away. Instead, now I have her out there somewhere in town with an assault rifle!”

“I’m sorry. You’re absolutely right; this was my mistake. Curtis didn’t want to be part of the plan. I forced him, and I shouldn’t have done that. I just thought it would be easier to get Lisa to do what we wanted if she was dealing with a familiar face.”

“You were wrong. Instead, the two of you managed to make it worse.”

“We had no way of anticipating what would happen with Shyla Dunn,” Laurel protested.

“That’s no excuse. In my business, you have to learn to expect the unexpected. Anyway, how big a threat are we talking about here? Does Lisa even know how to use these weapons?”

“Sure, she does. She grew up with guns.”

Denis shook his head. “Well, that’s just great.”

Laurel got out of the chair and made her way across the office. Her face was expressionless. For someone who had driven down here in the middle of the night, she looked clean and put together, which was annoying to Denis. She had this unshakable evenness of temper about her that always got on his nerves. He didn’t trust people who weren’t emotionally invested in the outcome of a problem.

“Look, I know how difficult this situation is,” Laurel said, “but don’t do anything simply because you’re angry, Denis. You need to listen to me. I know you. We go back a long way. We’ve worked together for years.”

“I realize that,” Denis replied, “and I’m sure you know I’m grateful for your help. By the way, does Lisa know about our relationship? Did you tell her?”

“Of course not.”

“All right. So what’s your point?”

“My point is, you and Lisa have history, but that has nothing to do with what’s happening right now. You have to put that aside.”

“This is not about me having a grudge against Lisa Power,” Denis snapped.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. This woman is putting everyone at risk. I know she’s a friend of yours, and I know the whole town loves her, but right now, I can’t afford to think about any of that. She’s a threat, and with every hour that passes, she’s becoming more of a threat. She is armed and dangerous. I’m going to do what needs to be done to take care of this situation before it gets worse.”

“What does that mean?” Laurel asked.

“Exactly what I said.”

“What are you going to do?
Shoot
her? Do you think that’s the answer?”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that, but that’s up to her.”

“Lisa won’t turn to violence,” Laurel insisted. “Trust me. That’s not who she is.”

“Your word doesn’t count for much right now,” Denis replied. “And I believe your husband would tell you that she’s already violent. She attacked him, remember?”

Laurel said nothing.

“Meanwhile, what do we do about the boy?” Denis asked. “That’s where this all started, and we’re still no closer to getting him back.”

Laurel grimaced and stared through the office windows at the first glimmers of morning over the river. “I promise you, Denis, we will find Harlan. I told you that from the beginning. Sooner or later, we’ll convince Lisa to give him to us. But right now, that may be the least of our worries.”

21

Before dawn broke, the temperature fell, and the freezing rain turned to snow. As Lisa drove, the whole world became white around her. Snow poured through her headlights and swept across her windshield. She had to go slowly. The Camaro was unfamiliar to her, and the car’s tires fought for traction on the ice.

She wanted to go south toward Minneapolis, but she assumed that was what they expected her to do. So she headed north through town, making multiple turns, staying on the side streets while she figured out their next move. The darkness and the snow gave her cover, which she needed, because she knew the word would be out soon. Everyone would be looking for a blue Camaro.

On Atlantic Avenue, she passed one of the local diners. Despite the early hour, the neon sign told her that the restaurant was open. She could get food and coffee and make a plan. She pulled into the diner’s unpaved parking lot and drove to the far back, where the Camaro couldn’t be seen from the street. There were only four or five other cars in the lot.

“I’ll be right back,” she told Purdue. “I won’t be long. Do you want something? Maybe pancakes?”

“French toast.”

Lisa smiled. “Okay. That’s my favorite, too.”

She climbed out of the sports car into the snow, which whipped into her face. She wore a flannel shirt under her leather jacket, but she
was still cold. She trudged through the long parking lot to the diner entrance, and she peered through the window before going inside. The interior was long and narrow, with laminate booths. It wasn’t even six in the morning, and only a couple of the booths were filled. She slipped through the door and took the first empty booth near the front window, where she could keep an eye on the street.

Her desire to remain anonymous lasted all of five seconds.

“Lisa Power!”

The excited voice of the waitress boomed through the mostly empty restaurant like a foghorn. In an instant, everyone in the diner was looking at her. Some obviously knew who she was; some were simply curious. As Lisa forced a smile on her face, the waitress hurried over. She slipped into the booth and leaned across the table to grab Lisa’s hands.

“Lisa, I am so thrilled to meet you!”

Her name tag read MISSY. She was slim and in her fifties, with sandy-brown hair in a messy pile on her head and a long face dotted with a few age spots and wrinkles. She wore a homemade crocheted blue top and jeans, with an apron tied around her waist. She had the throaty voice of a smoker and brought a whiff of cigarettes with her.

“I’m sorry—do you mind if I call you Lisa?” the waitress went on. “I feel like I know you. I am a big, big, big fan. Me and my sister and my mother, we all love your books. They are not going to believe it when I tell them you came into the diner. Can we take a selfie together?”

“Well, I’m in a little bit of a hurry, Missy.”

“Oh, this won’t take long!”

The waitress already had her phone in her hand. She rushed around to the other side of the booth, squeezed next to Lisa, and slung an arm around her shoulder. She extended her other arm with the camera and beamed at the lens. Lisa did her best selfie smile as Missy squeezed off several photos.

The woman clambered out of the booth again, looking pleased. “Thank you
so
much. This is amazing. I’m going to post these to Facebook right now.”

“
No
,” Lisa interrupted, too loudly. “Actually, would you mind waiting until I leave?”

“Oh, sure, sure, whatever you like. I bet we’d have people rushing over here as soon as they saw it. I get it—you want to have your breakfast in peace. I totally understand.”

“Thank you. Actually, could I get my order to go?”

“Absolutely. Anything you want, hon.”

Lisa didn’t bother looking at the menu. Every diner had the same things. She ordered french toast times two, plus coffee and hash browns and a side of bacon. Missy wrote it all down and headed to the kitchen counter to pass along the order. Lisa stared down at her hands rather than look around the diner, because she could feel the eyes of the other people sneaking glances at her.

Nervously, Lisa kept an eye on the diner window. The snow fell like a cloud over the world, but little had accumulated on the ground so far. Instead, the streets shone with a frozen glaze. As she sat there, she saw a Pennington County sheriff’s vehicle roll past the restaurant, and she held her breath, wondering if the SUV would turn in to the parking lot. But it didn’t. It continued down Atlantic Avenue out of sight.

“You know, I read
Thief River Falls
in one day.”

Missy was back, and she took a seat opposite Lisa again, as if they were old friends. She put a mug of coffee in front of her.

“Really?” Lisa said politely.

“Oh, I couldn’t put it down. My mom and I had to battle over who got to read it first, but I won. I love that you used real places around here in the book. Every chapter I would go, ‘Hey! I know right where that is!’”

“Yes, readers like that.”

“We sure do! And of course, I thought it was hysterical that you used your own house as the scene of the murder. That was so wild.”